


never ending nightmare

by missmaier



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Backstory, Blood and Gore, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 18:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18321278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmaier/pseuds/missmaier
Summary: while everything around James changed, Charlie stayed constant. until he didn't.or: the start of the end of the world.





	never ending nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> this is loosely based on Lauren Mee's tumblr post, which you can check out here: http://rumchatacream.tumblr.com/post/183705315954/james-charlie-backstory
> 
> enjoy!

“What do you suppose is going on?” Charlie asks as the fifth ambulance in 20 minutes goes down his street. Four cop cars, five ambulances. Washington D.C. had always been bustling, but even this was unusual. James leaned back, pretending to think hard.

“Hm…” he pondered, trying desperately to ignore Charlie’s hand on his waist. “Maybe… there’s a huge fire and they’re trying to rescue everyone.”

“There’s no smoke, Jem,” Charlie said with a light laugh. James rolled his eyes, taking a swig of the Four Loko and enjoying the pleasant buzz that filled his brain. “I think… maybe there’s a bank robbery. With hostages. That’s why they need the ambulances.”

James nodded, bumping Charlie’s shoulder with his own. “How many bad guys are there, do you s’pose?”

“Oh, at least 20.”

“Mm, at least,” James nodded, watching the fifth cop car go down the street, sirens blaring. “Armed. Bet they’re having a huge shootout right now.”

Charlie sighed, resting his head on James’ shoulder. James leans into him, watching the sun dip beneath the horizon and listening to whatever terrible pop music was playing on the small radio next to them. “How many hostages-” Charlie started, but was cut short by an ear-piercing scream from down the street.

Both boys sat up, looking for the source. But there was nothing there. “What the hell was that?” Charlie asked, and James shrugged and shook his head.

“Maybe one of your neighbors? Didn’t you say there was that lady with the mean husband downstairs?”

“Maybe,” Charlie said, but he didn’t look convinced. They settled back into comfortable silence, though they were both on edge.

James jarred back to reality as the radio changed to static. Charlie reached for the knob and turned it to a few different stations, but was still met with the same static. Another person screamed. James’ hand moved to Charlie’s sweatshirt, sudden nervousness making his chest clench. Another scream.

“Hold on a second,” Charlie said, standing up. James, still on edge, went to follow him. “Wait, Jem, just… stay right there for a second. I’m just gonna make sure everything is okay.”

“Charlie-”

“I’ll be back in a second,” is all Charlie said before climbing back in through his window and disappearing into his apartment. James leans against the wall, drawing his knees closer to his chest. He knows he’s not imagining the screams now. His parents cross through his mind. Maybe they’re okay.

James jumped as the radio came back to life, blaring an alarm noise he’d only heard in TV shows. “Emergency broadcast. This is not a drill,” a computerized voice followed the alarm, and James froze. “The city is on lockdown. Stay inside your homes and do not leave your building until you are authorized to do so. I repeat, stay inside your homes and do not leave your building until you are authorized to do so.”

“Charlie!” James called as the broadcast repeated the message over and over again. No response. James felt his blood run cold. “Charlie!” James pushed himself up from the fire escape, climbing in through Charlie’s window and shutting it, leaving the drink and radio forgotten outside.

James navigated through Charlie’s apartment, looking for any sign of him. “Charlie?” James pushed the door open to the hallway, and a neighbor ran past him in a blur. There was still no sign of Charlie or his parents. James wandered down the hall, glancing over his shoulder every so often. The emergency broadcast echoed from behind walls, and he could hear people locking their doors and whispering worriedly. “Charlie!”

A pair of hands grabbed him from behind, and startled, James tried to jump away. “James!” The voice instantly made him go still, and he looked up to see Charlie’s mother looking at him. “We need to go. Charlie and his father are already in the car.”

“Wh-what’s going on?” James barely had time to ask as Charlie’s mother gripped his hand and pulled him down the hallway, looking both ways before running down the stairs. “Mrs-”

“I don’t have time to explain,” she said breathlessly, and James said nothing more as they ran outside and climbed into Charlie’s car.

Almost as soon as James climbed into the backseat, Charlie gripped his hand tightly. He looked as terrified as James felt. As Charlie’s dad started the car, James started to protest. “Wait, the broadcast said not to leave-”

“Fuck the broadcast,” Charlie’s dad said, and James was startled by his language. Him and Charlie were 12, and while swearing wasn’t new to either of them Charlie’s parents certainly never did it in front of them. “We need to get out of here before all hell breaks loose.”

“Dad, what’s going on?” Charlie asked, voice quivering. His dad turned down the radio which was still blaring the emergency broadcast. 

“One of my coworkers came in looking deathly pale today,” Charlie’s dad said as he drove, the streets filling up quickly with cars despite the lockdown warning. The sound of horns blaring at each other was muffled by Charlie’s mom rolling up the windows. “A few hours later, he attacked someone else. He  _ bit her _ , tore her flesh right off her skin and didn’t even blink when she screamed. I…” Charlie’s dad white-knuckled the steering wheel. “I had to take care of him. We went to call the cops, but the lines were dead. When we went outside for help, it was chaos.

“Staying around here and following the lockdown procedure is only going to get us killed.” Charlie’s dad’s voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. “We’re gonna get out of town, stay in a motel and ride it out until the military takes care of this.”

James’ fingers moved over his food truck ID that he kept in his pocket, right next to the Polaroid of him and Charlie they had taken earlier. “What about my parents?” James’ voice was soft, and Charlie’s mother gave him a sympathetic look in the rearview mirror.

“I think they’ll be okay, dear,” she said. She was lying, and James knew it. He chose to believe her anyway.

James’ head dropped onto Charlie’s shoulder, and his eyes fluttered shut as Charlie whispered, “It’ll be alright, Jem.” James forced back the tears that threatened to fall and instead held onto Charlie’s words.

_ It’ll be alright. _

\---

They never made it to the motel.

In fact, they’d never made it out of the city. The traffic had come to a total standstill, and police were nowhere to be seen. All too busy dealing with the sick people. When a few sick people broke the windows of the car ahead of them and pulled the passengers out, they realized they weren’t safe.

James only saw a glimpse of blood before he was pulled away, but he couldn’t erase the screams of the strangers from his mind.

The four of them ran into a warehouse, seemingly abandoned judging by how dark and empty it was. But they were wrong about that, too. A group of people surrounded them, a few with guns and others with knives.

“Are you bitten?” One of them asked, eyes wild and hair a matted mess. As one of the people with a gun itched closer to Charlie and James, Charlie stepped forward, putting James behind him. Always had to be the hero.

Charlie’s dad shook his head. “No. We’re not sick.”

A couple of people checked them over to be safe, but the mob backed off once they saw for themselves that they weren’t sick. “You’re welcome to stay here with us until this disaster is sorted out,” a woman with scary eyes and long blonde hair said. Charlie’s parents, Charlie and James went off into a corner, huddling near each other.

Now that the chaos was over, James couldn’t seem to stop shaking. His shoulders trembled uncontrollably and tears burned the back of his eyes. They could still hear screaming outside, and his hands went to his ears to block it out. No one stopped him, not even Charlie, who seemed too numb to move.

They stayed in the warehouse for days. Days stretched into weeks. Before they knew it, a month had passed and there was still no word from the military. An older man who James learned was named Dave was always fiddling with a radio in the corner, but it didn’t play anything besides static and an occasional emergency broadcast. No promises of rescue, no sign that this nightmare was going to end anytime soon.

James knew his parents might have survived, but he didn’t cling to that hope. From what he’d heard from the scavengers that went outside, a lot of people had fallen to the sickness and were now dead people walking. Someone called them walkers, and the name stuck.

One night, James stirred when the space beside him where Charlie had been laying suddenly grew cold. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat up to see Charlie sneaking out of the room. “Charlie?” James whispered, careful not to wake anyone else.

Charlie put a finger to his lips, nodding his head to encourage James to follow him. James threw the covers off of himself, following Charlie to sit outside the meeting room where the adults sometimes talked.

“I just don’t understand why we can’t go outside,” Charlie’s dad was saying, and James heard several sighs of irritation from the other people present.

“We’ve been over this,” a dark skinned woman James didn’t know the name of said, leaning heavily on the table. “There’s no way to get out there without encountering the walkers. They’re  _ everywhere.  _ It’s barely safe to get outside to get supplies, much less move our camp entirely.”

Dave spoke up. “We have a good thing going here.”

“It won’t  _ last _ ,” Charlie’s dad said, running a hand through his hair. “What happens when the walkers get in and we’re cornered in here? What happens when we loot all of the stores around here and run out of food? When we run out of water? When winter comes? We have families here, I have my  _ son  _ to take care of. We have to think long term.”

Maya, an older woman, spoke up. “Is there a long term? The military  _ will  _ deal with this. We just have to wait it out.”

A grim silence filled the room, and James and Charlie exchanged a glance. “If you still believe that, you’re about as stupid as you look.” The woman with the scary eyes said slowly, her low, scratchy voice sending a shiver down James’ spine. She wasn’t from around D.C., she had some sort of southern accent.  “I agree with him. We need to move. We should go in the daylight.”

“Who died and put you in charge?” The dark skinned woman said, straightening up and giving the scary eyed woman a hard stare. “We need to talk about this more.”

“There is  _ nothing _ to talk about.” The woman with the scary eyes swept a glare across the group, scaring them all into silence. “We move at dawn. Anyone who doesn’t want to can stay here and die, if they so please.” She turned on her heel and left the room after surveying everyone in there, and James and Charlie quickly hid behind a wall so she wouldn’t see them.

Dave whistled. “That was intense. Isn’t that the lady that hits her daughter?”

“You heard her,” Charlie’s dad said, quickly changing the topic. “Those who want to leave, gather your things and do what you have to.”

Half the group left the warehouse the next morning and never heard from the other half again.

\---

James didn’t know how much time had passed, but he knew it had been years, at least. He tried to write down the dates at the beginning, but had lost the notebook while running from a herd. He tried counting the seasons, but lost track. Eventually he gave up.

All he knew now was that he was a teenager. Maybe 16. Or 17. The group he was in called themselves the Whisperers, and they were his family now. His real family was gone, probably dead. But he had Charlie and the others, and that was all that mattered. James had a home, and while it wasn’t picture perfect, it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

James’ group had made him strong. He wasn’t weak anymore. That scared little boy had died in D.C. with the walkers and the rest of the city. He was strong, unbreakable, a  _ survivor. _

The Whisperers walked among the walkers. They were almost a part of them. James had originally found the idea of wearing rotting flesh on his face revolting, but now he understood it was a necessity to survive. It was easier to work with the world’s changing ways rather than against it.

After Charlie’s parents had died, he changed too. The change was so sudden it almost scared James. The night his parents were slaughtered by a group of survivors, James had held him close as he sobbed himself to sleep. The next day, Charlie was missing, and he turned up back to camp drenched in blood with no explanation other than, “The issue has been taken care of.”

James had never seen him cry since.

\---

James hated attacks. He was an experienced killer and he had no problem putting down any person, living or otherwise, that he had to, but he still didn’t enjoy the attacks on these communities. He didn’t voice these concerns out loud, of course. Weakness was a poison. A disease. And it would only grow if James let it.

So he said nothing, only gripped Charlie’s hand tightly in his before letting it go. Charlie gave him a nod, a silent code for, “Good luck.” James nodded back.

James and Charlie had been split into different groups this time. Charlie was to go with the group to lead the half the herd around one side, and James lead it around the other. As they walked, one Whisperer suddenly stopped.

“What are you doing?” James hissed under his breath, daring to look behind him. The one that had stopped was a young boy, maybe 14, that James didn’t know the name of. “We need to keep moving.”

The boy was frozen in place, and he looked up at James, ocean green eyes standing out against his mask. “What if we don’t have to attack?”

James’ brows furrowed. “What?”

“These people… they’re just like us. Only on a different path!” The tension in James’ shoulders loosened, and he gripped the knife in his hand more tightly. “Maybe we can negotiate, work together-”

The boy stopped talking as James slit his throat open. 

He gurgled on his own blood, falling to his knees and trying desperately to stop the bleeding until he stopped moving. James watched him fall, his hands shaky and covered in blood. The knife clattered to the ground, and he backed away, forcing himself to tear his eyes off the body as he jogged to catch up to the group.

James had killed before, but this felt…  _ wrong _ , somehow. James shook his head. What he had done was the right thing. The boy was weak, his peaceful ideals would’ve only dragged them down. He clenched his fists, feeling the still warm blood on his fingertips as he willed himself to stop shaking.

As they reached the survivor’s camp, they were able to fend off the walkers pretty well, but as usual, were unprepared for the Whisperers’ assault. The first person fell to the ground with a shocked expression and a knife wound in his heart, and he barely had time to gasp for air before his body gave out completely.

The shock from the attack did its work. The survivors weren’t prepared, and the ones that weren’t taken down by the Whisperers were eaten alive. The screams had long since stopped bothering James, but they seemed louder tonight. He shook it off.

A young girl was running from the group, and James tore after her, grabbing her by the shirt and holding his other knife against her chest. She shook in his grip, tears streaming down her face and her hands clawed at his. “Please… please…” she begged for her life, her pleading brown eyes like huge saucers gazing into his.

“Hey!” A voice came from behind him. Charlie. “What are you waiting for? Get rid of her so we can go.”

James’ eyes went back to the girl, who had started to squirm more in his grip. Why was he hesitating?  _ These people are like us. _ He shook his head, trying to get the voice of the boy to stop.  _ Just on a different path. _

The young girl kicked him in the knee, and James grunted in pain but didn’t let her go. His eyes closed as he rested the tip of the knife against her chest. A hand rested on top of his, forcing the knife into her chest. She stopped whimpering, stopped moving. James dropped her, looking away from her body before it even hit the ground.

“What’s gotten into you?” Charlie asked, and the herd started to move away as their work was done. “We have to go, come on.”

James couldn’t stop shaking all the way back to the camp, and the young girl’s cries and the boy’s voice echoed in his mind for hours on end.

\---

James woke up with a gasp, hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead and heart beating erratically. His hands suddenly felt dirty. Coated in blood. The blood of all the people he had killed, the peace he had disturbed-

“Whoa, hey, hey.” Charlie’s voice brought him back down to reality, and James forced his teary gaze over to him. “Did you have another nightmare?”

James didn’t answer, just leaned his head on Charlie’s chest as his sobs subsided. Charlie’s arms wrapped around him, protecting him, like he always did. “Maybe he was right,” James said under his breath, and Charlie’s brows furrowed.

“What? Who?”

James thought about telling him, then shook his head. “No one.” It was safer to not tell him. Charlie might think he was weak, and the weak didn’t survive with the Whisperers. This was only a phase, one he’d move on from. He’d wake up soon. “I just want to go back to sleep.”

Charlie looked like he had more questions, but chose to leave it as he laid down on his back and pulled James with him, his head still resting on Charlie’s chest. Charlie’s hand combed through his hair gently, and James sighed. No matter what they believed, Charlie still loved him.

He hoped.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Charlie asked, and James nodded. 

“I will be. Sorry for waking you up.”

Charlie didn’t respond, just combed his fingers through James’ hair until he drifted off again.

\---

James was changing, though it was gradual. He heard the boy’s voice in his head, constantly. Day in, day out. Every time he killed, every time he refused to kill.

_ They’re just like us. _

Everyone did what they had to to survive.

_ Just on a different path. _

Maybe him and the Whisperers were on a different path, too. Maybe him and Charlie were.

The voice always ended with a scream of pain or a gasp of air, and James jarring back to reality.

\---

James waited until it was nighttime to leave.

It was safer this way. He didn’t know for certain that leaving wouldn’t get him killed, and he didn’t want Charlie trying to convince him to stay. As soon as he was sure everyone except the lookout was asleep and Charlie was breathing deeply next to him, he gently wriggled out of Charlie’s hold, careful not to wake him. He wandered over to a nearby tree where he’d kept a messenger bag filled with the Polaroid of him and Charlie, his mask, and enough food and water to last a few days.

He stepped carefully over sleeping Whisperers, freezing whenever someone would stir or make a noise in their sleep. The lookout was facing the other way, and paid no mind to James quietly slipping away.

“What, are you gonna go without saying goodbye?”

James stopped in his tracks and turned to face Charlie, who was leaned up against a tree with his arms crossed. Instead of answering his question, he asked, “You knew?”

Charlie sighed and nodded. “I’ve known for a while, I just didn’t know when you were gonna do it.” James opened his mouth to speak, but Charlie cut him off. “I know what you’re gonna say, that you can’t stay here.”

“I-”

“I get it,” Charlie said, surprising James into silence. “I mean, I don’t get this… adopted philosophy of yours, but I get why you’re leaving. I’m not going to force you to stay if you don’t want to.”

James looked down at his feet, his chest clenching. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to say goodbye, because…. I knew I was going to want to stay if I did.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Charlie said, approaching him slowly, careful not to crunch any leaves under his feet. “I just want you to know that my feelings toward you have never changed. I’ve never loved you any less, despite… all this.”

Charlie cupped James’ cheeks and lifted his gaze from the ground. Charlie looked sadder than James had seen in a long time. Since the night his parents had died. He was afraid Charlie had lost his humanity, but seeing him here like this, vulnerable, he knew he had been wrong. The tough act was exactly what it seemed like; an act. Right now, Charlie’s hard brown eyes were soft and full of starlight.

“I love you too,” James said, and he meant it. His hand moved to grip Charlie’s that was resting on his jaw. “But I have to do this. I can’t stay here any longer.”

“I know,” Charlie said, eyes moving to James’ lips. James closed the distance between them, relishing in what he knew was going to be the last time he kissed Charlie. “I wish I could stop you, but… I want you to be happy. Really.”

“Come with me,” James murmured, still so close that their lips brushed as he spoke. He held Charlie’s hands in his, gripping them lightly as he spoke. “We can go someplace better and survive without so much violence and death and killing. We can make it work. I know we can. Please.”

Charlie shook his head, backing away. James had known the answer when he asked, but it didn’t make it hurt any less when Charlie said it. “I can’t.” Charlie let go of his hands, and James let them drop to his sides. 

“Goodbye, Jem.” James’ heart sank as Charlie used the nickname for him they’d used as kids. That he hadn’t heard for years. The Whisperers didn’t use their real names. “I’ll miss you.”

Charlie turned and walked away, and James watched him go with a sinking feeling in his chest. He thumbed the worn picture that was tucked safely into the plastic of his old ID, silently wishing for better times, when their biggest worry was the test the next day or having enough money for lunch.

Charlie was out of earshot when he said it, but he hoped the message reached him anyway. “Goodbye, Charlie.”

He surveyed the Whisperer camp one last time. They moved around a lot, but the group always stayed the same. It wasn’t easy, leaving the group he’d been with since the beginning of this mess, even if they didn’t exactly see eye to eye. It was almost like leaving D.C. and his parents behind, except this time, he knew it was final.

James wiped the tears from his eyes, turned on his heel and disappeared into the forest, leaving his life and the Whisperers behind for an unknown future.

 


End file.
